McSweeney's

With subject matters ranging from murder mysteries in Indian villages to pirate adventures and life on the moon, it's like it's produced by a troop of Boy Scouts. I'm talking about McSweeney's, and the editors told me to say that.

McSweeney's, also known as Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency, TM's Internet Fondness, TM's Web-Based Malignance and TM's Clickity-Click Ha-Ha, is a loosely-defined literary journal that happens to have a small but growing presence on the web. In a recent profile in the The New Yorker, Editor Dave Eggers described his McSweeney's philosophy: "I try to make the magazine as untimely and irrelevant as possible." There is an interesting correlation between The New Yorker and McSweeney's: If the articles in The New Yorker were all written by sarcastic GenXers and were either tongue-in-cheek or complete fabrications then it would be just like McSweeney's.

McSweeney's has arrived to entertain. Its articles are half-truth and half-fiction. Its editorial staff seems to be inbred. They have NFL picks, and always pick the Green Bay Packers over whomever they're playing, no matter the game. Sometimes they publish wacky news releases about stolen tools and trucks from small towns in Wisconsin. They ran an article about a would-be biographer's correspondence with the Unabomber. Recently, they enlisted the help of domestic pseudo-journalists in their "Interviews with Drivers of Lunch Trucks" and "Warnings Affixed to Laboratory Doors at MIT" installments. Once, they listed the 10 Commandments solely by number in no particular order, but forget #2, in this article:

"THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

6, 7, 10, 4, 9, 3, 1, 8, 5"

McSweeney's has drummed up a rather loyal following of folks who obviously would like to write for the zine, but placate themselves by drafting rambling emails that the editors barely touch before posting for all to see. Personally, I'm less amused by amateur deranged readers than by professionally deranged writers, but I've read it all, so who am I to criticize?

The print version, aka Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, only three volumes old, is a hulking experiment in typesetting. Words are everywhere. There is a story on the spine. The Internet Tendency is slightly less aesthetically jumpy than the Quarterly Concern, yet holds true to McSweeney's irreverent ideology. Published out of an apartment in Brooklyn, the editors ship it off to Iceland for printing, and bring back Icelandic knickknacks for their subscribers. Unfortunately, their Internet readers do not enjoy this windfall, but we are satisfied because McSweeney's is so damn good.

Frankly, there is something very appealing about McSweeney's, especially at work, when you're bored and unchallenged, reading articles by people who seem just like you: witty and sarcastic. They know it.

McSweeney's has entered its belle époque on the Web and in print. They told me to say that, too. McSweeney's has brainwashed me into believing it. I will follow them anywhere.

— Sara J. Brenneis (sara at flakmag dot com)